


This is the way the world ends

by captainhurricane



Category: Metro 2033 - All Media Types, Metro Last Light
Genre: Gen, missing chapters, story study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:51:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3923578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the seconds after the bombs have fallen on Moscow, there is only fear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the way the world ends

_"This is the way the world ends  
Not with a bang but a whimper."_

So said the poet Eliot years and years ago and never have those words been more accurate. The stairs leading down to a new bleak future whirr and finally stop and nobody remains to listen to the deafening silence behind the closed doors to the Metro, to the death of Moscow. The station is filled to the brim, some people even daring to cross to the train tracks; all scared, all confused, all crying. All remembering the flaming path the missiles drew on the pale sky, the start of the end of the world. The guards try and try their hardest to keep an order, shouting and pushing but even their hands are trembling. It will pass, it will pass, some whisper among themselves. It’s the end of the world, it’s all gone, dead and gone, others cry and fall down to the floor to be trampled by others. They’re like cattle, these proud human beings, scared cattle whose numbers have now dwindled dangerously low as a devastation spreads on the surface.

The trains run, some crash, killing their passengers and the wayward children of the surface that have wandered onto the tracks. The trains stop running.

A few times the great doors are opened a crack to let this or that person in, them always going through the stern-faced guards with their gasmasks and probing hands clad in thick gloves. I’m clean, please! The people yell even when the radiation is felt like a faint tickle on their skin, soon toe spread to their insides. Even the blast wave had knocked half a building on them and they’re dragging their bleeding stump behind them.

Then the doors start being kept closed.

The days pass.

It is the end of the world, they all agree now. Some end their lives by their own hands, unable to handle the horrifying reality where humanity is no longer on top of the food chain, where the world behind the Metro’s door is barren and dead. It can’t be! Maybe it’s just us, maybe it’s just Russia and maybe-

maybe there really is no hope.

Days pass and the last train of the Metro stops on its tracks, finally given its all to save its passengers and its drivers. The survivors start spreading through the Metro, walking on the tracks, huddled together. These trembling children with their weak legs and ears still ringing from the force of the blast that made the high archways of the stations shake.

x

Days pass and as it always does, life, even this choked-up, dark life starts to go on. The last remnants of Moscow’s inhabitants spread through the Metro and establish homes, some still having hope that it’s all temporary- the military will fix this! The president will fix this!- some given up on it. Some are close enough to the surface to hear the rumble of tanks. Some are close enough to know when all the noise ends and there is nothing but the painful silence of a world killed by its own children.

How could this happen? How did we let this happen?

The first ones to return to the surface for supplies are the guards, the brave and the loyal, the ones not giving up on hope. They cover every inch of bare skin and dress up in gasmasks and thick clothes. They take their small handguns, having no idea yet of the dangers of the surface, no idea of the shotguns and rifles assembled and shared on other stations. Tears tickle the corners of their eyes at the creak of the Metro-doors, at the sight of the grey world in front of them. The doors barely open from the force of a hundred or so bodies fallen against it, all dead from the instant the missiles hit the ground and spread their deadly fire. The brave, the loyal continue on and pay them no mind even when their hearts thump loud in their ears. They take what they can, scavenge like the birds they had scared off their fields years ago with scarecrows, predators scared off back to their underground darkness.  
They don’t speak of the surface to the ones asking.

X

Information spreads slow, yet humanity digs its claws deep into the metal and dirt of the Metro. If we can’t live on the surface, we’ll live here. Eyes used to bright sunlight squint and ache at the constant blanket of darkness but still they live on. As they gain hope, they lose hope. The first ones to find that monsters that the devastation had created are the first ones dead at their claws, their teeth. Now they know what the guns are for.

X

Blast shadows are painted against the walls of the most ruined tunnels but these shadows move, these shadows scream their last words over and over again.

X

There is a group of tourists in one of the stations. They speak five words of Russian between them, speak in hushed tones amongst themselves because what was supposed to be a vacation has instead turned into an existential nightmare.  
There is a child without parents. There are parents without children. There is a woman who was late for her job and now sits against one of the pillars of the station she has started to call home and stares numbly ahead. There is a boy who was going to his first job interview and instead now tries to make his dead phone work to call his mother. A thousand upon thousand lives now closely intertwined, closer than ever, all lost, all confused. All scared. The end of the world was, after all, nothing but a background to dystopian novels and a nightmare dreamt by dark-minded writers.

The ghosts of the Metro cry and scream and disappear and reappear. Life goes on.


End file.
